Leaving KU

2-12-99. The Other Way Journal. 21 years old. Well finally I did what I have been thinking about for a year and a half. I took this semester off. This was a decision I felt inside myself that needed to be done. The decision to leave school for this semester was based upon my unknown future. I don’t know what I want to do and my body seems to be getting worse. School was
becoming stressful and at times time consuming. I just needed to get away and figure my life out. What sparked this change was a lecture my psychology professor had given regarding types of people. “There are two types of people; those that live life by essence and those that live life by existence. The existence type people do things everybody else does. They don’t take chances,
they don’t voice their own opinion, and they do things the way things have always been done. People who live for essence live life for now. There is no guarantee that you will be alive tomorrow. They enjoy life more. At first it seems that these people live a “who cares” attitude but that is not the case. They just don’t neglect their gift and that gift is life. These people are the people who don’t do what everybody else is doing. These people are also the people that most people don’t associate with. It’s because they are different.” I was listening to my professor discuss these two types of people and I started to think about why I am in college. I think I want to be a psychologist of some kind. I was the existence type person. I was tired of watching my life pass by. I never got a chance to really enjoy myself and I wanted too before I got worse. I have watched my body go through changes and have noticed I was not improving. Thoughts of being worse scared me. I have faith in God but when most of the time I see with my eyes it can get me depressed when things aren’t improving. I got scared and felt that now was the time for change. It’s kind of like this; I don’t want to waste time in school and missing out on physical aspects of my life when in the future I may not be able to do those physical things.